A crack in the wall

Hate to keep working a plowed field, but today we need to revisit the seminal “Sovereignty and the UFO” essay in the journal of Political Theory. That’s because of what’s happening tomorrow in Washington, D.C.

The “Sovereignty” piece, penned by political scientists Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall in 2008, laid out a theory for why America’s higher-learning institutions were incapable of entertaining serious debates on The Great Taboo. The disconnect was more political than scientific, and the result, they argued, was intellectual poverty on a broad scale.

“Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth” — Mister Spock/CREDIT: www.fanpop.com

“If academics’ first responsibility is to tell the truth,” they declared, “then the truth is that after sixty years of modern UFOs, human beings still have no idea what they are, and are not even trying to find out. That should surprise and disturb us all, and cast doubt on the structure of rule that requires and sustains it.”

At American University, international relations professor Patrick Jackson, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education at the School of International Service, is not only familiar with the Wendt/Duvall piece, he sympathizes with major portions of it. “Science is the excitement of not knowing. I’d like to think we want our students to think more broadly than to simply reproduce in some form or fashion the same old idea they’ve heard all their lives,” says Jackson. “I mean, what is tenure if not to explore what Nietzche called untimely thoughts?”

Accordingly, on Wednesday, Jackson has volunteered to sub for PBS science reporter Miles O’Brien (scheduling conflict) and moderate AU’s three-hour panel discussion “UFOs: Encounters by Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials.” This is a free public event extending from an honors colloquium taught by cinema professor John Weiskopf. The lineup includes USAF veteran Charles Halt (the Bentwaters incident), retired NASA scientist Richard Haines (National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena founder), Roswell investigator Thomas Carey, and New York Times bestselling author Leslie Kean (UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record).

This is a big deal. Although increasing numbers of institutions are warming to the idea of sponsoring discussions about extraterrestrial intelligence, the SETI model — ETs are just like us, playing around with radio signals while conveniently stranded on some cosmic island far, far away — is about as far as they’ll typically extend their necks. Wednesday’s roundtable is different.

“How often does an honors class take a serious look at UFOs? John Weiskopf is to be commended for making this happen,” states Kean. “American University is breaking ground here which could help encourage other universities to do the same. Many people and departments at AU are rallying around this event and they all take the subject seriously. I hope this will pave the way for the academic community to become more objective and rational about this subject.”

To be sure, cautions Jackson, the classroom bridge into this exotic realm is built on the foundation of science fiction in popular culture. But it’s also a novel way of introducing students to AU’s School of International Service, one of the top-ranked foreign studies programs in the country.

“What are international relations about if not an encounter with ‘the other’ in some way? In this case, it would be the alien,” says Jackson, who has yet to be convinced the evidence supports the ET premise. “If you look at Star Trek, whether it’s Klingons they’re dealing with or the Federation, it’s all international politics. What we want to do is stimulate intellectual creativity and promote robust discussion, not to shut it down by saying it’s prima facie absurd.”

Could a successful AU symposium signal to other universities that it’s OK to hold UFO forums without getting the cooties? “I could imagine a pathway,” Jackson says. “But let’s hold this forum and see what happens.”

24 comments on “A crack in the wall”

federal funding. ‘nuf said. the top offficers of the organizations understand waht is at stake – their jobs. that’s the whole enchilada – we suffer as a people because folks are fearful for their employment. nice place.

After reading Joeschmoe’s comments I realised that I’d only read Kean’s chapter and not the actual paper on Sovereignty and the UFO. A lot of academic terminology in places, but a definite must-try-to-read for anyone trying to understand the human factor in regard to UFO investigations – or lack thereof. Government (including the military) is made up of lots of individuals making decisions, so the problems highlighted apply to everyone, whether we’re consciously aware of them or not.
In regard to the colloquium, I hope it’s the result of militant agnosticism…

Metaphysics claims that aliens are “emissaries” from GOD who seeded our planet and have aided mankind since the beginning. They travel here not just from our universe and dimension, but from other dimensions that occupy the same space that we do but much like a television they are on a different wavelength and when they enter our carbon system from say a silicon system they must wear the carbon ‘camouflage”. Decades after learning this I accidentally photographed 10 daylight “Kecksberg” type UFOs which Dr Bruce Maccabee here told me were “unidentifiable and opaque”. Further investigation of the now famous “Inaja UFO Photo” provided a lost alien code that allowed me to successfully link UFOs to each other as well as countless ancient artifacts and the Nazca Lines in Peru. This historic event has won front page coverage in every newspaper in San Diego and an award winning CBS interview. The Los Angeles Times broke the story and labeled the evidence on my non-profit website and Youtube video “UNSETTLING”…they’re here http://www.orreman7.com/BestUFOphotoever.html

@ joeschmoe
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“…dogmatic arrogance of the science community…” Very well put. I will steal this.
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@everyone
If only there was some way of getting Billy to these affairs. Perhaps crowd funding would work.
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@Billy
If we got the money, could you get the time?
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I gotta go…

A remarkable symposium was hosted last June a year ago in Greensboro NC. The subject was the UFO/UAP scientific Investigations of this phenomena. The speakers were: from the US- Leslie Kean, Dr. Richard Haines, Col. Halt, Dr. Ron Westrum, Dr. Alexander Wendt, Nancy Talbott, and Astronomer Jeffery Bennett. From France representing Geipan was Xavier Passot, Belgium had Gen. Wilifried De Brouwer, Chile representing CEFAA had Jose Lay.
This conference was filmed in HD and available at CUFORNC.com and is a unique chance to hear academia and government officials speak on this subject scientifically. This is a must purchase for any student or teacher who wants to seriously investigate this phenomena. Kudos to AU for hosting this event and accept our best wishes for a successful program.

I’m a little bit fuzzy on this colloquium business, being a Brit. The first lines of the course description are: “This course is about mankind’s desire for extraterrestrial contact. It examines the historical links between film and television to historical world events as they relate to increased reports of contact.”
So is the Great Taboo being breached by this event in order to teach about films or psychological imperatives (both sides?) or to highlight the fact that there are phenomena that we don’t yet understand (or maybe all of the above)?

This event has taken one year to produce. American University’s Dr. Michael Manson, Director of the Honors Program and Lee Holsopple, asst. Vice-President of University Programs and Alumni Relations have supported this in spite of enormous odds. At least 4-5 university departments and nearly two dozen people came together to make this rare event a success, a breach in the The Taboo Wall of our Society, the first landing, so to speak, on a university campus. Classic Science Fiction is only part of the course, in fact, one-third of the course. To prepare for this, students have read all of the non-fiction books by the panelists, read current research websites, studied the Drake Equation, Fermi Paradox, the Great Filter. They have seen interviews with leading scientists, interviewed scientists, heard Ted talks about Exoplanets, and more. These are Honors Colloquia (the brightest, curious and driven to understand); it a fertile soil for inquiry.

Tried to re-read the entire 2008 essay again as set forth by Wendt and Duvall.
Why the ignorance on the part of government, society and science?
Is the ETH that much of a threat to mankind?
What if the phenomena turns out to be an intelligence existing in another form of reality whether electronic or inter-dimensional?
Would such a finding conclusively impact on the great taboo, if the ETH was ruled out?
On a another but more important and serious topic: the 11/17/14 of US Weekly magazine hints that Jennifer Anniston and Dustin may elope-Which will generate more readership and reviews than this issue- which is a sad reflection on American society in general.

There is a prehistory to this “modern ufology” symposium at American University

1968: I was at AU working on my PHD in physics (received in 1970) I attended a UFO lecture at AU by two representatives from NICAP Several weeks later I visited the NICAP office and became an “investigator.” During the next 20 years I studied numerous NICAP cases (e.g.,McMnnville, Gemini 11, New Zealand, JAL1628,…). In 1979 I and Richard Hall founded the Fund for UFO Research (FUFOR).

1987: I arranged, with the help of the National Board of FUFOR, to hold the annual MUFON International Symposium at AU on the date of the 40th anniversary of the Kenneth Arnold sighting (June 24, 1947). Speakers from many countries presented their research and over 500 people attended.

2014 (September): my new book, The FBI CIA UFO Connection, publishes for the first time the story of an event that was a consequence of that symposium. That event was a UFO lecture that I^ presented at the headquarters of the CIA!

Hello DeVoid
This blog is the only blog I personally read, and often turn to for some uptodate knowledge about the state of mind in/within the ufo society.
Im a foreign living person with some personal experiences regarding the ufo phenomenon, so Im a knowing person without the reason to look for evidence.

If this symposium could be given the right kind of journalistic and tv/media cover, it could be one of the first events in an forthgoing process towards an early, and nationwide disclosure! maybe…

The Leslie Kean book (in chapter 27 ) offers a synopsis of the Wendt/Duvall essay- which articulates the 3-4 positions of mainstream institutions, society, and the science community for invoking and rationalizing the “great taboo”. I am unsure if these positions are conscious or unconscious In fact the co-authors of the academic piece did not even speculate on the origin of the UFO phenomena. Wendt and Duvall cogently state that this is a subject that we are unable to consider or as Hyneck would say “to think the unthinkable” . I have to admit that I re-read the chapter every few months to re-enforce and indoctrinate myself with the contents. You would hope that some day and time there will cease to exist “a powerful desire to do nothing”. Unfortunately with the dogmatic arrogance of the science community and complicity of the mainstream media (review the Terry Hansen book) these mindsets or “second looks” will never occur in our lifetime, simply for the underlying reasons set forth in the essay.
BTW I tried reading the entire essay but academia narrative got the best of my intellect and I thank Kean for the “reader friendly chapter” in her book.